YEREVAN, April 19, /ARKA/. Armenian Card (ArCA) payment system said it had executed a total of 101,459 Internet payments in the first quarter of 2011, including utility payments, worth 831 million Drams, almost a 80% rise from a year earlier.

The number of cashless transactions through ATMs grew by 124.3% ( 52.2 million Drams) to 25,977. The number of card-to-card money transfers grew by 18.4% from the first quarter of 2010 to 10, 596 (925.6 million Drams).

Overall, 100.6 billion Drams worth transactions were executed through ArCa system in the first quarter of 2011, by 26.1% more from a year earlier. The number of transactions was said to have grown by 24% to 2,204,435.

Some 2,121,079 transactions worth 95.2 billion Drams were executed by ArCA cards, a 25% growth from a year before. Also 54,275 transactions worth 3.1 billion Drams were executed by Visa cards. The growth was 50% and 29,081 transactions worth 2.4 billion Drams were executed by MasterCard cards. The growth was 49.5%.

Overall 1,856,658 transactions with cash worth 90.9 billion Drams were executed, by 23.5% more than in the first quarter of 2010 and also 347,777 cashless transactions worth 9.8 billion Drams , a 56.8% rise from a year before.

Armenian Card company was established in 2000 as a single national system of payments by plastic cards. Today 19 of 21 commercial banks operating in Armenia are ArCa members with a different degree of participation. ArCa is a full member of international payment system MasterCard Europe, and also implements processing of VISA and American Express cards. ($1 – 377.48 Drams). -0-